


In the Light of the New Day

by natcat5



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, teen wolf fall collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcat5/pseuds/natcat5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morning dawns, breaking through the nightmares and the bad memories. They, and all they have survived and made, are alive.<br/>Post-canon domestic AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Light of the New Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [werewolffling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/werewolffling/gifts).



> Thank you to the-candy-van for beta-ing!

He can still feel the blood coating his fingers.

The slick, warm slide of his fingers across the hilt of the sword, the punched out, pained sounds wheezing from Scott’s throat, the sharp-shooting, sick thrill of pleasure that shoots through his gut, traveling outwards through the entirety of his body. One side of him revels in it, and the other recoils, stomach twisting. If he was still in control of his body, he would puke, but he’s not, so all he can do is watch, and silently scream. Scream and scream and scream…

It’s not a voice that wakes him up, but hands, gently cradling his face, smoothing his hair back away from his forehead, brushing away the wetness gathered along the tips of his eyelashes. Thumbs smooth along the tops of his cheeks, tracing down along his freckles, and just barely touching the top of his lip.

A tremor runs through his body as he wakens fully. When he opens his eyes, it's to Lydia leaning over him, her hands on his face and her lips pressed together thinly. Her hair, still that gorgeous strawberry blonde, falls like a curtain around them. Stiles is entranced by her eyes for a few seconds, by the way they stare at him so intensely, by the way they seem to have his own captured. But wakeful consciousness returns to him and he remembers his dream, slowly becoming aware of the way their sheets are sticking to his body. A sheen of sweat covers him from head to toe.

“Shit,” he curses, voice hoarse, “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

Lydia makes a sound in the back of her throat and pushes his hair back from his forehead again, the damp locks lying loosely against his skin.

“Don’t be,” she replies after a moment, running her hand down his jawline and on the soft skin under his chin. “You weren’t screaming, just… thrashing a bit.”

Stiles winces and sits up in bed, the sheets falling away from him. He feels winded and gross; embarrassed that, even ten years later, he’s still having these nightmares. Still waking Lydia up with the bullshit he just can’t seem to get over.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and Lydia makes another displeased sound, leaning in to rest her head on his shoulder.

“I already told you, don’t be,” she says, “We all get nightmares.” There’s a sharper in her tone. She’s particularly intolerant of anyone feeling guilty over things they can’t control.

Lydia lifts her head, meeting his eyes with her own, “The only reason you don’t wake up for mine is because of how much I value my own silence.”

It’s a subtle chastisement, but they’ve known each other for long enough, been together for long enough, that Stiles gets the message. They’ve all suffered, and they all still feel the effects. Lydia wrestles with as many demons as Stiles does, and hers can’t be exorcised out of her. Being a Banshee is a hundred times more binding than being possessed.

Stiles closes his eyes and exhales heavily, leaning forward to lean his head against his wife’s.

“Alright then,” he agrees, his voice still a little shaky, still too breathless. “I know. Sorry, Lyds. I know.” This isn’t a new conversation. It’s hard, feeling like he’s made no progress, like he’s regressing, like there’s nothing he can do that can banish the nightmares like he banished the spirit.

But he _knows_ that that isn't true. He knows that they _have_ moved forward, all of them. He and Lydia, Scott, and Kira, and Malia, and Derek, Chris Argent and Isaac Lahey, Liam Dunbar- _all_ of them. The past may still be with them, they might all still get crippling nightmares, but they haven’t stopped moving forwards towards the future. They haven’t stopped _making_ a future for themselves.

Lydia smiles, thin and wry, before leaning forward to kiss him lightly.

“I know you know,” she replies in a teasing tone that has the corner of his lip curling upwards involuntarily, “Just like I know you know that it’s Monday, and _your_ turn to wake up Aria.”   

Stiles blinks, and then warps his face into an expression of mock horror, teasing a light laugh out of Lydia, who pushes at his shoulder playfully.

“Get yourself a drink of water and take a shower first. I’ll make pancakes, the smell might wake her up before you have a chance to,” she says, once again pushing back the sweat-dampened hair stuck to his forehead. Stiles smiles at her, the fear, the pain and the disgust from the dream fading away, almost into non-existence. He leans forward and kisses her, deeply, sweetly. A more chaste kiss than the ones he used to dream about as a teenager, in love with the idea of a person more than the actual person herself. But a kiss with more passion, more love in it than his hormone filled fifteen-year-old mind could have ever conjured up.

Lydia kisses him back, her nose rubbing alongside his and her hand dropping from his face to rest lightly on his waist. She sighs into his mouth, and he smiles in response, their eyes opening slightly to meet, both with lips curled upwards into happy little smirks. They deepen the kiss for a few lingering seconds, before Lydia finally pulls away, brushing her nose against his cheek. She turns her face to give him a stern look.

“Aria,” she reminds, pulling away reluctantly, “Go shower. And before you ask, _yes_ I’ll remember to put blueberries in the pancakes.”

Stiles grins at her before sliding out of bed, a shiver traveling across his skin as the cool air hits his torso. It’s been a mostly mild fall, but one that’s followed a blazing hot summer. Aria had received her first sunburn, and Lydia and Stiles had received a stern tongue-lashing from Mama McCall about being mindful of their child’s tolerance to the sun. Apparently, she’d inherited her father’s tendency to burn like a lobster instead of her mother’s ability to tan like a goddess. That would probably cause issues when she was older, but for now, it just made for a cranky four year old, who had to spend the majority of the summer inside, or slathered in the strongest, child-safe sunblock Melissa could find.

Riding the wave of the summer heat, the fall has been a warm one. Not unseasonably so, but warmer than generally expected. Kira and Scott, with their mutually high-temperature supernatural body heat, have kept their air conditioning on even though it’s practically November. Eunhae, the little Banshee they adopted two years ago, has taken to wearing thick, winter sweaters in protest. Ama wears them too, even though she’s a werewolf and runs as hot as Scott does, but Ama loves following Eunhae’s lead, closer to her adopted sister than to anyone else.

Despite the warmth of the weather, Stiles takes his shower piping hot, enjoying the feeling of the last remnants of his nightmare swirling down the drain. The heat is an effective counter to the perpetual cold he felt when the nogitsune possessed him, to the cold he still felt in his veins when it had a body of its own. In the steamy clouds of his hot shower, it’s easy to push those memories back into the past where they firmly belong.

When he steps out of the shower, he can smell the pancakes clearly, the smell cutting through the clouds of steam. It’s one of a handful of foods that Lydia will actually offer to make. Cooking is not something she takes to naturally, and Stiles is usually the one who makes dinner, fixes everyone’s lunch, fries some eggs for breakfast. But there are a few things that Lydia actually enjoys cooking, and pancakes are on that list.

The smell, however, has not yet woken their daughter. So Stiles dries his hair superficially, pulls on the shirt and pants that he ironed last night, and walks down the hallway to their daughter’s room.

It was Star Wars themed at first, when it was just a nursery. Stiles asserting that it was the perfect ‘fuck you’ to gender stereotyping babies, while Lydia had merely shaken her head and agreed so long as he promised not to buy any baby clothes without her present. Chewbacca bedsheets she could accept. A Chewbacca onesie, not so much.

But Aria is four now, and has things that she likes, suddenly full of independent thoughts and interests different to her parents. She’s _extremely_ fond of birds, of all things. Especially pretty, tropical birds that are full of color. All attempts to make wolves her favorite animals have failed, much to Scott’s dismay and Derek’s petulant disappointment. She likes foxes, however, and sleeps with the hand sewn fox plushie that Kira made for her on her bed. She still has glow in the dark stars on her ceiling, but her blankets and curtains are now parrot-themed, and she’s already asked whether or not her walls can be repainted.

Those blue walls are now dimly reflecting the glow from her nightlight, still a luminescent Darth Vader head. Morning light streams in through the space on her windows not covered by parakeet-covered drapes, falling onto her bed and illuminating her sleeping form.

Aria’s hair is just a shade paler than Stiles’s own, and her eyes are the same honey-brown color as his, but for all her complexion is dotted with freckles, for all her eyes are wide and warm like her father’s, she resembles her mother the most. In facial structure, in demeanor, in the way she holds herself. She looks like Lydia in a way that’s hard to put into words, and many people in town have taken to fondly calling her ‘Mini Miss Martin’. Aria usually misses the fact that they’re simply comparing her to her mother, and will generally reply to such comments with a frustrated huff and a sighed ‘It’s Mini Miss Martin- _Stilinski_ ’ with as much exasperation as a four year old can muster.

She is very, very much the daughter of Stiles and Lydia, and it amazes him sometimes, catches him off guard, leaves him breathless, how much he loves this small human. How much he adores this person that he and Lydia made together. This person, that he watched grow from a blob on a hospital screen, to a screaming, pink, sleepless ball of poop and rage, to a scheming, troublesome, sleepless ball of poop and rage, to a mischievous, playful ball of infant one liners and proto-sarcasm.

She is so definitively _theirs,_ and it takes his breath away every time the realization hits him. It’s not the amazement of the fact that he’s married to his childhood crush, the girl who was so out of his league, so unattainable, for so long. It’s not even the fact that they lived long enough to make a kid. Lived long enough to finish school, to get jobs, buy houses and apartments, adopt kids and make kids.

Well, actually, maybe it’s a bit of that. The fact that, after all the death they witnessed. All of the horrible things that they survived. They were able to _create_ something. Something precious and beautiful, with his eyes and Lydia’s smile and both of their ruthless wit and sarcasm (which, admittedly, is probably not a good thing. Since she’s _four)._

Aria Martin-Stilinski is _theirs,_ and Stiles loves her. Loves her for who she is, and what she represents. Loves her for being life, being alive, being a growing child in a town who’s birth rate is _finally_ higher than its death rate.

There’s an iPod docking station by her bed, and a small blue iPod sits on it, filled with Aria’s favorite songs. As Stiles enters the room, he turns it on, pressing play and turning the volume up, just a little. A song from the newest Disney movie starts playing, light hearted with lots of flutes and guitar. It’s a nice song to wake up to, he thinks.

He walks towards Aria’s bed and gently eases her out from under the blankets, hefting her sleeping form upwards into his arms and letting her head rest on his shoulder. Her wispy brown hair is in a mess, so there’ll be a fight with Lydia and her hairbrush later in the morning, and there’s drool dampening a spot on his shirt. Her tropical print pyjamas have a marker stain on one sleeve, matching the scribbles on the ‘timeout’ corner of her room. The sunlight illuminates her sleeping face, and she’s never looked more perfect. She always looks perfect.

Stiles holds her in his arms and dances with her, a gentle rocking motion, bobbing on his feet, humming along to the music and swaying back and forth. She begins to stir almost immediately, burying her face into his neck and making sleepy, snuffling noises, one hand fisted into his shirt.

His mother used to wake him up like this, he vaguely remembers. Rocking him awake with music playing in the background. She’d carry him down to the kitchen sometimes, where there was more space to sway, and where her voice would carry as she sang along. Stiles really, _really_ can’t sing, so he sticks with humming softly into Aria’s ear, and smiling down at her as she lifts her head and blinks her eyes open.

“Good morning, sunshine!” he greets cheerfully, kissing her on the nose, “Are you ready for a new day?” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fluff and domestic is not my strong point. I'm surprised I was able to pull this off!


End file.
